NOTE ON THE EDITING: The present selection is taken from the
1662 English translation. For the most part I have made an effort to
leave the seventeenth-century text in its original form. Some archaic
words and grammar do appear, but spelling and punctuation have been
modified to facilitate the reading. In some instances I have replaced
Olearius' transliterations with more recognizable ones, but in others the
original has been kept. Notes, alternative spellings, and short explanations are given
throughout the text in brackets, usually accompanied by an equal sign in
the format: [=note]. Footnotes are included for longer explanations.

INTRODUCTION:
Adam Olearius was a seventeenth-century German scholar, employed as
secretary to an embassy sent by the small German state of Holstein to
explore an overland trade route with Persia. The first embassy was
dispatched to Russia in 1633-34 to secure the tsar's permission to travel
and ship through his realm. The
second was sent in 1635 to complete the deal with the king (shah) of
Persia. Although the commercial mission failed miserably, the embassy was
successful in the incredible amount of information gathered by Olearius.
After returning to Holstein in 1639, Olearius continued in the Duke's
service and published the first edition of his travels in 1647. In 1656
he released a second, enlarged edition which became very popular
throughout Europe and within a few years was translated into Dutch,
French, Italian and English.

TABLE of CONTENTS: (This table consists of general topics. It should
be kept in mind that there is overlap and that other minor topics
are discussed throughout the selection. If this is being viewed from a web-browser, the FIND (Ctrl-F) function can be helpful to locate
specific words and topics.)

Ere we leave the city of Ispahan [=Isfahan], which is now the
metropolis of the whole kingdom of Persia, it will not be amiss [if] I gave the
reader an account of what I found therein worthy my observations during our
abode there for the space of five months, and to give here such a description
thereof as he must expect to be so much the more full and particular inasmuch as
there is not any author who hath hitherto written of it, hath done it with
exactness enough to satisfy even a mean curiosity.

[I have omitted a paragraph on the history of the name
‘Isfahan’.]

This city lies in the province of Erak [=Iraq] or Heirack[1],
which is the ancient Parthia, in a spacious plain, having on all sides at about
three or four leagues[2]
distance a high mountain which compasses it like an amphitheater, at thirty-two
degrees, twenty-six minutes latitude, and eighty-six degrees, forty minutes
longitude; and I have observed, that the needle declined there seventeen degrees
from the north towards the west.It
hath, toward the south and south-west side, the mountain of Demawend[3];
and on the north-east side, towards the province of Masanderan [=Mazandaran],
the mountain of Jeilak-Perjan.The
author of the French book, entitled Les
Estats & Empires, puts it in the province of Chuaressen [=Khurasan]: but
he is mistaken, for Khurasan is a province of the Usbeques, Tartars, at 43.
degrees latitude, and lies at a great distance from that of Iraq.

If you take in all its suburbs it will be found that it is
above eight German leagues in compass, in so much that it is as much as a man
can do to go about it in one day.The city hath twelve gates, whereof there are but nine open; above
eighteen thousand houses, and about five-hundred thousand inhabitants.[4]The walls of it are earth, low and weak,
being below two fathoms, and above but a foot thick, and its bastions are of
brick but so poorly flanked that they do not anyway fortify the city, no more
than does the ditch which is so ruined that both summer and winter a man may
pass over it dry-foot.F. Bizarro,
and some others affirm that the walls are of chalk; but I could find no such
thing, unless it were that in the castle, which hath its walls distinct from
those of the city, there are some places which look as if they were whitened or
done over with chalk or lime.

The river Sendurat [=Zayanda-rud] which rises out of the
adjacent mountain Demawend runs by its walls on the south and south-west side,
on which side is the suburbs of Tzulfa [=Julfa].Before it comes into the city it is
divided into two branches, one whereof falls in the park called Hasartzebib
[=Hazarjarib], where the king keeps all sorts of deer, and from the other there
is drawn a current of water which passes by channels under ground into the
garden of Tzarabagh [=Charar Bagh]. This river supplies the whole city with
water, there being hardly a house into which it comes not by pipes, or so near,
as that it is no great trouble to them to fill their cisterns of it, which they
call haws and burke; though besides this convenience
of the river they have wells, the water whereof is as good as that of the
river.Allawerdi-Chan[5],
sometime governor of Shiras [=Shiraz], built at his own charge the fair stone
bridge which is between the garden of Charar Bagh and the city upon this river,
which is as broad in that place as the Thames is at London.

Shah Abbas [r. 1588-1629] had a design to bring into the
river of Zayanda-rud that of Abkures [=Kuhrang] which rises on the other side of
the same mountain of Demawend; and whereas to bring these two rivers into the
same channel there was a necessity of cutting the mountain, he employed, for the
space of fourteen years together, above a thousand pioneers at that work.And though they met with extraordinary
difficulties, not only in that they had to do with pure rock which in some
places was above two hundred foot deep, but also in regard the mountain being
covered with snow for near nine months of the year; they had but three to work
in, yet had he the work constantly carried on with such earnestness, that all
the khans and great lords sending their work-men thereto, upon their own
charges, there was in a manner no doubt made of the success of that great
enterprise, since there remained to do but the space of two hundred paces when
Shah Abbas died, leaving the consummation of the imperfect work to his
successor, who hath as yet done nothing therein.

If Ali, the patron and great saint of the Persians, had lived
in that time he might have done Shah Abbas a very great kindness by opening that
rock at one blow with his sword and so made way for the river, as he sometime
did, according to the relations of the Persians, in the Province of Karabach
[=Qarabagh], where he made a passage for the river Aras through the mountain
which he opened with his sword and which upon that occasion is to this day
called Ali eressi, that is, the
Straights of Ali.

The city of Isfahan was twice destroyed by Tamerlane; once,
when he took it from the king of Persia; and the other when the said city would
have revolted from him, and become subject to its lawful Prince.Jos. Barbaro, who traveled into Persia
in the year 1471 says that about twenty years before, Chotza, who he calls
Giausa, King of Persia, desirous to punish this city for its rebellion,
commanded his soldiers not to come thence, unless they brought with them the
heads of some of the inhabitants of Isfahan; and that the soldiers, who met not
every day with men, cut off women’s heads, shaved them, and so brought them to
Chotza, and that by this means the city was so depopulated that there were not
people enough left to fill the sixth part of it.It began to recover itself under Shah
Ismael II [r. 1576-77] but indeed it was Shah Abbas by translating the seat of
his empire from Caswin [=Kazvin] to this city, brought it to the height it is
now in, not only by adorning it with many fair, both public and private
structures, but also by peopling it with a great number of families which he
brought along with him out of several other provinces of the kingdom.

But what contributes most to the greatness of this city is
the metschids, or mosques, the market
places, the bazaars, the public baths and the palaces of great lords that have
some relation to the court; but especially the fair gardens, whereof there is so
great a number that there are many houses have two of three and hardly an but
hath at least one.

The expenses the Persians are at in their gardens is that
wherein they make greatest ostentation of their wealth.Not that they much mind the furnishing
of them with delightful flowers as we do in Europe; but these they slight as an
excessive liberality of nature, by whom their common fields are strewed with an
infinite number of tulips and other flowers; but they are rather desirous to
have their gardens full of all sorts of fruit trees and especially to dispose
them into pleasant walks, of a kind of place or poplar, a tree not known in
Europe, which the Persians call tzinnar. These trees grow up to the
height of the pine and have very broad leaves, not much unlike those of the
vine.Their fruit hath some
resemblance to the chestnut while the outer coat is about it; but there is no
kernel within it so that it is not to be eaten.The wood thereof is very brown and full
of veins, and the Persians use it in doors and shutters for windows, which being
rubbed with oil look incomparably better that anything made of wall-nut tree,
nay indeed than the root of it which is now so much esteemed.

All things in their gardens are very delightful but above all
their fountains.The basins, or
receptacles, of them are very large and most of marble or free-stone.There are belonging to them many
channels of the same stone which convey the water from one basin to the another
and serve to water the garden.Persons of quality, nay indeed many rich merchants, build in their
gardens summer houses or a kind of gallery or hall which is enclosed with a row
of pillars whereto they add at the four corners of the main structure so many
withdrawing rooms, or pavilions where they take the air, according to the wind
then reigning.And this they take
so much delight in, that many time these summer houses are handsomer built and
better furnished than those wherein they ordinarily live.‘Tis true, their great-men’s houses and
palaces are very magnificent within; but there is not anything so ugly without
in regard most of their houses are built only of earth or brick baked in the
sun.

Their houses are in a manner square and most have four
stories, accounting the ground-room for one.They call the cellar, and such places
belonging to a house as are under ground, sirsemin; the ground-rooms of the house,
chane; the first story, kuschk; the second, tzauffe; and the third, kesser; and they call the open halls, eiwan.Their windows are commonly as big as
their doors, and in regard their buildings are not very high; the frames
ordinarily reach up to the roof.They have not yet the use of glass, but in winter they cover the frames
of their windows, which are made like lattices, with oiled paper.

There is also little wood in Persia, I mean in most of its
provinces that not being able to keep any great fire they make use of stoves,
but they are otherwise made than those of Germany.In the midst of their low-rooms they
make a hole in the ground of about the compass of an ordinary kettle which they
fill with burning coals or charcoal, and put over it a plank or little low table
covered with a large carpet.Sitting according to their custom, upon the ground, they thrust their
feet under the table and draw the carpet over their body up to the breast so as
that the heat is thereby kept in.Some may pass away the night also thus accommodated and so they procure a
very natural heat with little fire, and they imagine it to be the more wholesome
in that it troubles not the head, which in the mean time hath the benefit of a
fresh and healthy air.They call
[these] kind of stoves, tenuer, and
that the brain might not be offended by vapors, which charcoal commonly sends up
into the head, they have certain passages and conduits under ground through
which the air draws them away.Persons of mean quality, and such as are saving, dress their meat with
these tenuers and make use of them instead of an oven, and bake bread and cakes
over them.There is not a house in
Isfahan but hath its court which a man must cross ere he comes into the
house.

They say that heretofore, the streets of Isfahan were so
broad that twenty horse might have rid a-breast in any of them.But now, especially since the city began
to be repeopled in the time of Shah Abbas, they husbanded their ground better,
especially in the heart of the city near the Maidan [=Maydan] and the bazaar,
insomuch that the streets are become so narrow that if a man meets a
mule-driver, whom they call charbende, that is, a servant to look to
the asses, who many times drives twenty or more before him, he must step into
some shop and stay there till they be all passed by.All the streets abutting upon the Maydan
are very narrow, but the Maydan, or marketplace, though it hath shops all about
it, is so large that I cannot imagine there is any in Europe comes near it.

This marketplace is seven hundred foot long, and two-hundred
and fifty broad[6].All the houses about the Maydan are of
equal height and all built of brick having their shops vaulted: where you have
on the side towards the king’s palace: goldsmiths, lapidaries, and druggists;
and opposite to them, those merchants who see all sorts of stuffs of silk, wool,
and cotton, and the taverns where they tipple and sell all sorts of
provisions.All these houses are
two stories high and have all their eiwans, or open halls.The market-place is planted all about
with a kind of trees, called scimscad, which is somewhat like box, but
they are much higher and the branches being perpetually green they are so cut
that the shops are to be seen between the trees and make a very delightful
prospect.But it is not one of the
least ornaments of their Maydan that [of] the rivulet, which runs at the foot of
these trees in a channel of free stone, raised two foot from the ground all
about the market-place.

Tradesmen do not work at all themselves, but have their
slaves and apprentices who do all the main work at their houses, while the
master’s business is only to sell his commodities in shops appointed for that
purpose at the Maydan in a great vaulted gallery built with arches, or in the
streets abutting upon it where every trade hath its particular quarter assigned
it, or haply in a street appointed for that particular commodity and where they
permit not the selling of any other.The observance of which order, in regard the Persians are very neat in
all they do, makes so delightful a show that I have not seen anything like
it.At the end of this gallery
there are two balconies covered over head opposite one to the other where their
music, which consists in timbrels, hawboys [?], and other kind of instruments
which they call kerenei, is to be
heard every night at sunset, as also when the king, either going out of the city
or coming into it, passes through the Maydan.They have this kind of music in all the
cities of Persia which are governed by a khan and they say Tamerlane first
introduced that custom which hath been observed ever since.

The king’s palace is upon the Maydan.The Persians call it Dowlet-Chane or Der Chane Schach and there lie before
the gate several great pieces [i.e., canons] of all sizes, but most such as
require 36 or 48 pound bullet, very rough cast, without carriages and lying upon
beams so as that no use can be made of them.Nicholas Hem, a Hollander who traveled
into Persia in the years 1623 and 1624, says that these pieces were brought
thither from Ormus, and that they secure the avenues of the place; but as I said
before it is impossible they should be discharged.Nay, the palace itself hath no
fortifications and is compassed only by a high wall.In the day time there are but three or
four upon the guard and in the night there are fifteen at the gate, and about
thirty within the king’s apartment.These last are all persons of quality and sons of khans of whom some
stand sentry, and the rest walk the round, and they all lie upon the ground in
the open air.This guard hath its
kischiktzi, or particular captain,
who every night delivers the king a list of their names who are upon the guard,
that he may know whom he may confide in and by what persons he is served.

Over the first gate there is a great square structure which
hath large windows on all sides, and we were told that within it was carved all
over and gilt.The other principal
apartments of this great palace are the tab chane, which is a spacious hall
where the king treats all the great lords of his court and entertains them at
dinner upon the day of their Naurus,
which is the first day of their year; the divan chane[7]
which is the ordinary place where all appeals are tried and where the king
commonly gives audience to the ambassadors of foreign princes, as we said
elsewhere, which is done, partly upon this accompt, that this edifice having a
great court adjoining to it, into which it looks, the king may have the
convenience of showing the ambassadors some of his best horses and his other
pieces of magnificence as he did at our first audience.The haram chane which is a hall wherein the
cassaha [=khassa], that is the king’s
concubines, who are always shut up in several apartments, have their meetings to
dance before him and to divert him with their musicians who are all eunuchs;[8]the deka, or the place of the king’s
ordinary residence where he lodges and eats with his lawful wives.All these halls have belonging to them
several chambers, closets, galleries, and other necessary apartments for the
lodging and divertissement of so powerful a prince and so great a number of
ladies who are all with him within the same palace, wherein there is not any
considerable apartment but hath its particular garden.

At the entrance of the King’s palace, and about forty paces
from the outer gate, on the right hand side there is another gate which gives a
privilege to the whole place and makes the sanctuary we spoke of before, called
by the Persians Alla-Capi [=Ali Qapu,
or Sublime Porte], that is, God’s gate.All those who stand in fear of imprisonment, whether upon a civil or
criminal accompt, find here an assured sanctuary and refuge, even against the
king’s displeasure, and may live there till they are reconciled to their
adversaries, if they have to do with private men, or obtained their pardon of
the king, provided they have wherewithal to submit.Murderers and assassins participate of
the same privilege; but the Persians have so great an aversion for theft, as
accounting it a base and infamous crime, as it really is, that they permit not
thieves, if they do come in, to stay there many days.At the time of our travels, we found in
this sanctuary a sultan who having either through misfortune or his own ill
conduct lost the king’s favor, and being in fear of losing his life, was got in
thither with all his family and lived in tents which he had set up in the
garden.

Behind the king’s palace lies the castle, which they call Taberik Kale.It serves for a citadel, which is the
signification of the word kale, and
it is fortified with a rampier and several bastions of earth, which being very
sharp above, Nicholas Hem (whom I have found in all things else the most exact
of any that have written of the city of Isfahan) took them for towers.The king does not live in it, but there
is a governor who hath the command of it, and a strong garrison within it which
is kept there for the security of the treasure, the arms, and ammunition of war,
that are within it, though all the artillery consists only in some
field-pieces.

On the other side of the Maydan, in a by-street, there is
another sanctuary which is called Tschehil Sutun [=Chihil Sutun], upon
occasion of the forty beams which prop the roof of the structure, and which all
rest upon one pillar, which stands in the middle of the metschid, or
mosque.Into this sanctuary there
got a great number of the inhabitants of Isfahan when Tamerlane punished the
rebellion of this city.For though
he had no great sentiments of piety, yet did he discover a certain respect for
the places he accounted sacred; and accordingly he spared all those who took
refuge in the mosque, but ordered all the rest to be cut up in pieces and
commanded the walls of the court belonging to it to be pulled down.But Shah Ishmael had them built up
again, and made the place a sanctuary.[9]

Towards the south part of the Maydan stands that rich and
magnificent mosque which Shah Abbas began and was almost finished when he died:
but Shah Safi had the work carried on at the time of our being there, causing
the walls to be done over with marble.It is dedicated to Mededi, who is the twelfth Imam, or saint, of the
posterity of Ali, for whom Shah Abbas had so particular a devotion that he was
pleased to build several other mosques after the same model (though much less)
at Tauris and other places, in honor of the same saint, wherein he made use of
the marble which he had brought from Eruan, which is as white as chalk, and
smoother than any looking glass.But the marble which was spent in the building of the great meschid at
Isfahan, is brought from the mountain of Elwend.The Persians would have it believed that
Mehedi is not dead but lies hid in a grot, near Kufa, and that he shall come out
thence, some time before the day of judgement, and ride Duldul, Ali’s horse,
upon whom he is to go all over the world to convert people to the religion of
Muhammad.Whence this mosque is
called Metzid Mehedi Sahebeseman.

To go from the Maydan to this mosque, a man must pass through
a great court paved with free-stone at the end where there is, under a tree, a
fair cistern wherein those who go to do their devotions in the mosque wash and
purify themselves.Behind this tree
there is a pair of stairs by which you go up to the square place, which is much
less than the fore-said court, and thence there is it is but a little further to
the mosque.John de Laet[10],
taking it from Nicholas Hem, affirms that there is a pair of stairs of thirteen
steps to get up to the mosque and that those stairs are cut out of one pierce of
marble; but there is no such thing.The portal is of white marble, and at least as high as that of the Meschaick Chodabende in Sulthania.The door is covered all over with plates
of silver which are gilt in several places.

As you pass through the door you enter into a great court
round about which there is a vaulted gallery and in the middle of it a great
cistern of free-store built eight square and full of water. Above this gallery
there is another, not so high as this, which upper gallery hath, towards the hejat, or court, a row of marble pillars,
which in some places are gilt.A
man must cross this court to go into the mosque wherein are the mederab and the cathib, that is, the altar and the
pulpit, according to their way.As
you come in you pass under a vault of extraordinary height, done over with
glittering stones some blue, some gilt.It is a vast structure having many niches and chapels which are all
upheld by marble pillars.[11]But the most remarkable thing in all
this emerat, is that all the walls,
as well those of the gallery, which is in the court, as of the mosque itself,
are of marble, (which is most of in white and extremely well polished) but is
five or six foot in length and breadth, and they are so neatly put one into the
other, that, the junctures being in a manner imperceptible, a man cannot but
admire the art of the workman and acknowledge that the workmanship is not to be
imitated.The meherab, or the
alter, is all of one piece of marble having on each side a pillar of the same
stone, which is also all of one piece.Besides this mosque, which is the chiefest in all the city and the most
sumptuous of any in the whole kingdom, there are in Isfahan many others, but
they are much less and there is a too great a number of them for us to undertake
to give here a more particular description thereof.

In the midst of the Maydan there stands a high pole, much
after the manner of those that are set up in several cities of Europe, to shoot
at the parrot, but, instead of a bird, they set on top of it a little melon, an
arpus, or an apple, or haply a
trencher with money upon it; and they always shoot at it on horseback and that
riding in full speed.

The king himself is sometimes pleased to make one, among the
inhabitants, when they are at that sport, or sends some of his chiefest lords to
do it; and commonly there are very considerable sums laid.The money which falls down with the
trencher belongs to the king’s foot-men and he who carries away the prize is
obliged to make a feast for all the company; nay for the king himself if so be
he hath shot among them.They play
there also at a certain game, which the Persians call Kuitskaukan, which is a kind of mall or
cricket; but they play at this also on horse-back and strike the bowl to the end
riding in full speed.They also
often exercise themselves at the tzirid, or javelin; there we have
described elsewhere.And in regard
the Persians hath the best horses in the world, and that the Persians are very
curious about them, they many times lay wagers on their swiftness, and ride them
between the two pillars which are at both ends of the Maydan.When the king is only a spectator of the
sport, he sits in a little wooden lodge, called scanescin, which is at one of the
Maydan, set on four wheels, for the more convenient removal of it from one place
to the other.

On the other side of the Maydan, over against the great
mosque, are the wine taverns and other drinking-houses whereof we spoke
before.There are several kinds of
them.In the scirechanes, they sell wine; but those who have the least tenderness for
their reputation will not come into those places which are infamous and the
common receptacles of a sort of people who divert themselves there with music
and the dancing of some of their common drabs, who having, by their obscene
gestures, excited the brutalities of the spectators, get them into some corner
of the house or draw them along into some public places, where they permit the
commission of these abominations as freely as they do that of ordinary sins.

In the Tsia Chattai
Chane, they drink thè, or tea,
which the Persians call tzai, though
the tzai, or the cha are probably but a kind of thè, and the chattai, in as much as it is brought
them from chattai: we shall have
occasion to speak more of it hereafter.They are only persons of good repute who drink of this, and frequent
these houses, where in the intervals of their drinking they spend the time at a
certain game somewhat like our Tick-Tack, but they commonly play at chess, at
which they are excellent and go beyond the Muscovites, whom I dare affirm to be
the best gamesters at chess of any in Europe.The Persians call this game Sedrentz, that is, Hundred-cares, in
regard those who play at it are to apply all their thoughts thereto; and they
are great lovers of it, inasmuch as from the word Shah, whence it hath its name,
they would have it believed it is of their invention.Some years since, there was published in
Germany, a great volume, upon the game of chess, wherein the author, too easily
crediting Olaus Magnus[12],
would have it believed that the ancient Goths and Swedes put those to play at
chess who were suitors to their daughters, that by their management of that
game, which hath no dependence on fortune, they might discover the judgement and
disposition of their pretend sons in law.But these are only fables as is also what is related of one Elamaradab,
King of Babylon.The governor of
this prince was so tyrannical, as the story at least would have it, that no body
thinking it false, to represent to him the dangers whereto his cruelties exposed
the state and his own person, one of the lords of his council, named
Philomester, invented the game of chess, which instead of openly opposing the
sentiments of the tyrant, discovered to him the duty of a prince towards his
family and subjects, by showing him the removals of the several pieces, by the
representation of two kings, encamped one against the other, with their queens,
their officers and soldiers; and that this wrought a greater impression on the
king than all the other remonstrance that could have been made to him.

The Cahwa Chane
are those places where they take tobacco, and drink of a certain black water,
which they call cahwa [=coffee]: but
we shall treat of both hereafter in this very book when we shall have occasion
to speak of the Persians manner of life.Their poets and historians are great frequenters of these places and
contribute much to the divertisement of the company.These are seated in a high chair in the
midst of the hall, whence they entertain their auditors with speeches and tell
them satirical stories, playing in the mean time with a little stick with the
same gestures and after the same manner as those on who show tricks of
legerdemain among us.

Near these taverns of drinking-houses are the shops of
surgeons and barbers, between which trades there is a great difference in
Persia, as there is within these few years in France.The former, whom they call tzerrach, only dress wounds and hurts;
and the others, named dellak, only
trim unless they sometimes are employed about circumcision.These barbers are much taken up, for
there is not a man but is shaved, as soon as any hair begins to appear; but
there is not, on the other side, any who carries not this razor about him, for
fear of getting the pox, which they are extremely afraid of, because it is very
common among them and very contagious.

As you go to the Maydan, on the same side and turning on the
right hand, you come to the bazaar, or true market-place, and in the midst of
the market-place [there is] the kaiserie, or kind of open cloister where
are sold all the richest stuffs and commodities that the kingdom affords.Over the gate of the structure, there is
a striking clock made by an Englishman named Fesly, in the time of Shah Abbas:
and in regard, that then there were few lords that had watches the Persians
looked on the motions of that work as a thing miraculous and supernatural.This English clock-maker had met with
the same fate as Rodolf Stadler, and had been cut into pieces by the friends of
a Persian, whom he had killed and the clock had been out of order ever since his
death.[13]

This market-place consists of several streets, covered over
head, and is so full of shops, and those shops so full of all sorts of
merchandises, that there is nothing, though ever so rare in the world, which is
not to be had here and at a very reasonable rate.For indeed there is nothing dear at
Isfahan but wood and provisions inasmuch as there is no forest near it nor
meadows for the feeding of cattle.

Of all the shops I saw at Isfahan, I was not pleased so much
with any as that of a druggist who lived in the Maydan on the left hand as you
go to the Metzid, by reason of the abundance of the rarest herbs, seeds, roots
and minerals it was furnished with.The root tzinae (not chinæ) which the Persians call bich tzini, and rhubarb, which they call
rawentzini, and is brought thither
from Chinæ, and great Tartary, were not worth here above three Abbas’s, or a
crown the pound.

There is not any nation in all Asia, not indeed almost of
Europe, who sends not its merchants of Isfahan, whereof some sell by wholesale
and other by retail by the pound and the ell[14].There are ordinarily about twelve
thousand Indians in the city, who have (most of them) their shops near those of
the Persians in the Maydan, and their merchandises in the caravansaries, where
they have their habitations and their store-houses.Their stuffs are incomparably fairer and
their commodities of greater value than those of Persia; inasmuch as, besides
the musk and amber grease, they bring thither great quantities of pearls and
diamonds.I observed that most of
these Indosthans [=Indians], had,
upon the nose, a mark of saffron, about the breadth of a man’s finger; but I
could never learn what that mystery signified.They are all Mahumetans [=Muslims] of pagans: they
burn the bodies of their deceased friends and kindred, and in that ceremony the
use only the wood of the Mesch-Mesch,
or apricot-tree.But of these, a
particular account will be given in the travels of Mandelslo into the
Indies.Besides these Indians,
there is at Isfahan a great number of Tartars from the provinces of Khurasan,
Chattai, and Bukhar; Turks, Jews, Armenians, Georgians, English, Dutch, French,
Italians and Spaniards.

The city is supplied with provisions out of the other
provinces of the kingdom.Out of
that of Kirman, there are brought, in the winter time, fat sheep, and, in
summer, lambs, which are sold, at Isfahan, at nine or ten Abbas’s a piece: for
the very skin is worth five or six, upon the account of the fur, which is very
precious there.The province of
Kilan [=Gilan] furnished it with rice; and those of Kendeman, Tasum, Ebarku, and
Jeschi, though they lie at a great distance, with wheat and barley.Wood and charcoal are sold here by the
pound, the wood near half a penny, and the charcoal a penny a pound, in regard
they are forced to bring it from Mazandaran and Jeilak-Perjan.

[I have transposed a section on money to further down.]

The great trade of the city of Isfahan hath obliged the king
to build there a great number of caravansaries.These are spacious store-houses, built
four-square and enclosed of all sides with a high wall for the security of
foreign merchants who have their lodgings in them, as also for that of the
commodities they bring thither.They are two or three stories high and have within, many conveniences,
courts, chambers, halls, and galleries.

Among other public structures, we may well take notice of the
two monasteries of Italian and Spanish monks which are in the most northernly
quarters of the city and about a thousand paces distant one from the other.One is the convent of the Augustine
monks whereof we have spoken before; but the other is inhabited by certain
Carmelites, who are Italians, and though they were but ten in all, yet one may
boldly affirm that those of this order have not another convent in any part of
Europe.Their prior’s name was F.
Tinas, and he was, at our being there, very ancient, a good man, and of free
disposition, as were also the other monks, who live among the infidels much more
orderly than they do elsewhere.We
are obliged to acknowledge their civilities, especially those among us who
having the advantage of the Latin tongue could converse with them.We never visited them but they treated
us with a collation and dismissed us extremely obliged to them for their
kindness, as in other things, so particularly, in the instructions they gave us
how we ought to behave ourselves during our abode in Persia.They presented M. Hierome Imhof (a
senator of Nuremberg, and one of the chief gentlemen belonging to the embassy,
who is now in Germany, in a court much different from that of Shah Safi) with a
very fair Italian and Persian lexicon which he promises to publish with the
Latin, since by him added to the other two languages.They did me, in particular, the favor,
to afford me refuge in their convent, to protect me against the persecutions of
the Ambassador Brugman, and to get my letters conveyed into Germany, with much
safety and speed.[15]

At the time of our being there they were also beginning to
build a convent for certain French Caupcins, who had bought a place for that end
within a quarter of a league of the monastery of the Augustines.They were but three in all, who seemed
to be very good people and had attained some learning.They had finished the chapel and were
then upon the dormitory, which had adjoining to it a kitchen-garden and a
vineyard, with much likelihood they would not give over building with that.

Between this last monastery and that of the Carmelites, are
the king’s stables, near which there is a pretty high tower, which is all built
of earth and the horns of stags and ahus.They say that Shah Tamasp I [r. 1524-1576], having killed two thousand of
those beasts at one hunting, employed their horns in that building in memory of
so remarkable a defeat, and that he therewith made that tower which they call keleminar.

The parts adjacent to the city, are not unsuitable to the
sumptuousness of its structures, and the greatest of so famous a
metropolis.The king’s gardens,
which they call Charar Bagh, is no doubt one of the noblest in all the
world.It is above half a league in
a perfect square and the river Zayanda-rud, which hath spacious walks on both
sides of it, divides it into a cross, so as that it seems to make four gardens
of it.At one of its extremities
towards the south there is a little mountain divided into several alleys which
have on both sides steep precipices, in regard that the river, which they have
brought up to the top of the mountain, does thence continually fall down by
channels into basins which are cut within the rock.The channels were about three foot broad
and were cut upon every side so as that the water falling directly down, and
with a great noise into the basin, extremely delighted both the ear and the
eyes.No basin but the water fell
into it and upon every alley there was a basin of white marble which forced the
water into diverse figures.All the
water about the garden fell at last into a pond which in the midst of it cast up
water forty foot high.This pond
had at the four corners of it so many larger pavilions whereof the apartments
were gilt within and done with foliage, there being a passage from one to
another by walks, planted with tzinnar trees, whereof there being
millions, they made the place the most pleasant and delightful of any in the
world.

The fruit trees are not to be numbered, and there are of all
sorts which Shah Abbas, who began this garden, had sent for not only out of all
the provinces of the kingdom, but also out of Turkey and the Indies.Here you have all sorts of apples,
pears, almonds, apricots, peaches, pomegranates, citrons, oranges, chestnuts,
walnuts, filberts, gooseberries, etc., besides a great many not known in
Europe.We saw there a kind of
grape which they call hallague, of
the bigness of a mans thumb, which had no stone [=seed], but the skin and meat
firm and of admirable taste.This
garden is kept by ten master-gardeners who have each of them ten men to work
under them; and there is this further convenience in it, that when the fruits
are fit to eat, they permit any that have a mind to go into it and to eat what
they please of the fruits, paying four kasbeki, or two pence a piece; but they
are forbidden to carry any away.

The city hath, on all sides, very large suburbs, which they
call abath, whereof the fairest and
most considerable is that which is called Julfa, wherein there are twelve
churches and above three-thousand houses, equal in point of building to the best
in the city.The inhabitants of
this quarter are Armenians, Christians, and most of them merchants and rich men,
whom Shah Abbas brought out of great Armenia, and planted in this place.They pay the king but two hundred
tumans, by way of tribute, which amount to about thousand livers, which sum
their daroga, who in our time, was
called Chosrou Sulthan, and the Calanter, Seferas-beg, are obliged to
bring into the king’s coffers.

On the other side of the river Zayanda-rud, lies the suburbs
of Tabrisabath, where live those who were translated thither out of the province
of Tauristhan by Shah Abbas; upon which accompt, it is sometimes called
Abbasabath.

The suburbs of Hasenabath is the ordinary habitation of the
Tzurtzi, that is to say the Georgians, who are also Christians, and most of them
merchants and wealthy men, as the Armenians, as well by reason of the trade they
drive within the kingdom, as in all other places abroad.They delight much in making voyages,
especially to the Indies and into Europe, insomuch that most of the merchants
who come to Venice, Holland, and other places, and who are there called
Armenians, are of this nation.Not
that the Christians, whether Armenians, Georgians, or others, are not permitted
to live within the city; but their living in there remote quarters proceeds from
the desire they have to settle themselves in a place where they might live
quietly and enjoy the freedom of their conscience.For the Persians do not only suffer them
to inhabit any where, since they have a particular quarter assigned them within
the city of Isfahan behind the Metzit Mehedi, in a place which they call
Nessera; but they have also an affection for them, as well upon accompt of the
advantage they make by trading with them and consequently the cultivation of
vineyards.But the Persians, who
are so given to wine, that it were impossible they should forbear it, imagine
they commit no great sin in the drinking of wine, though it be done even to
excess, provided their vineyards are dressed by Christian.The Armenians are expert enough at all
things requisite to the ordering of the vines, but they understand nothing of
the making or preserving of wine.They are no lovers of white wine, insomuch that when it hath not stood
long enough in the vat, or is not high colored enough to their fancy, they pour
into it a little brazil-wood or saffron to heighten its color.They do not keep it in buts or tuns, but
either in great earthen pots or fill therewith the whole cellar without using
any vessel at all.

There is yet a noble part of the suburbs towards the
west-side of the city, named Kebrabath, deriving its name from a certain people
called Kebber, that is to say, infidels, from the Turkish work kiaphir, which signifies a renegat
[renegade?].I know not whether I
may affirm they are originally Persians since they have nothing common with them
but the language.They are
distinguished from the other Persians by their beards which they wear very big
as also by their habit which is absolutely different from that of the
others.They wear over their
waste-coats a cassock, or coat, which falls down to half the leg and is open at
the neck and shoulders, where they tie it together with ribbons.Their women cover not their faces, as
those of the other Persians do, and they are seen in the streets and elsewhere,
contrary to the custom of those who pretend to live civilly; yet have they a
great reputation of being very chaste.

I made it my business to inquire what religion these Kebbers
are of, but all the accompt I could have of them was that they are a sort of
pagan who have neither circumcision, nor baptism, nor priests, nor churches, nor
any books of devotion or morality among them.Some authors affirm that they have a
certain veneration for the fire, as the ancient Persians had; but there is no
such thing.They believe indeed the
immorality of the soul, and somewhat consonant to what the ancient Pagans writ
of Hell and the Elysian fields.For
when any one of them dies they let a cock out of the house of the party deceased
and follow him into the fields without the city, and if a fox take him by the
way, they make no doubt but that his soul is saved; but if this experiment take
not, they use another which in their opinion is more certain and infallible,
which is this.They put about the
deceased person his best clothes, hang several gold chains and jewels about his
neck, and rings, and whatsoever else he had of most value of that kind upon his
fingers and in his hands, and so dressed he is brought to the churchyard, where
they set him standing against the wall and keep him up in that posture by
putting a fork under his chin.If
it happens that the crows or any other ravenous birds pick-out his right eye, he
is looked upon as a saint, there’s no doubt of his salvation, the corps is
buried with ceremonies and is very gently and orderly let down into the
grave.But if the said birds
unfortunately make at the left eye, ‘tis an infallible argument of his
damnation, they conceive a horror at him as a reprobate, and they cast him
headlong into the grave.

There are near and about Isfahan fourteen-hundred and sixty
villages, the inhabitants where are all in a manner employed in the making of
stuffs and tapestry, of wool, cotton, silk, and brocado.

The fields about the city lie very low, and it seems nature
was willing in that to show an effect of her providence, inasmuch as were it not
for that convenience the country would not be habitable by reason of the
excessive heats which reign there.For the convenience they derive from this situation is this, that they
can make the river Zayanda-rud overflow, when the summer heats have melted the
snow on the neighboring mountains and draw it all over the fields.Johannes de Persia says indeed that the
river, falling again into its channel, leaves a slime behind which corrupts the
air; but he is mistaken.For it is
certain that some provinces only excepted, which lie upon the Caspian sea, there
is not any place in all Persia where the air is more healthy that at
Isfahan.

The ordinary money of Persia is of silver and brass, very
little of gold.The Abbas, the
garem-Abbas, or half-Abbas (which they commonly call Chodabende), the scahi, and bistri, are of silver.The former were so called from Shah
Abbas, by whose command they were first made, being in value about the third
part of a rixdollar; so that they are
about 18d. sterling [‘d.’ denoted British pence] though they do not amount by
weight to above 15d.Shah
Chodabende gave his name to the half-Abbas.The scahi are worth about the fourth
part of an Abbas, and two bistri and a half make a scahi.Shah Ismail had coined in his time a
kind of money which was called Lari,
and it was made after the manner of a thick Latin wire, flatted in the middle,
to receive the impression of the characters, which showed the value of the
piece.The Persians call all sorts
of copper or brass money, pul, but
there is one particular kind thereof, which they call kasbeki, where of forty make an
Abbas.When they are to name great
sums, they accompt by tumains
[=tumans], each thereof is worth fifty Abbas.Not that there is any piece of money
amounting to that sum, but the term is only used for the convenience of
accounting, as in Muscovy they account by rubles and in Flanders by thousands of
livers.They will receive from
foreigners no other money than rixdollars, or Spanish ryals, which they
immediately convert to Abbas, and gain a fourth part by the money.The king of Persia farms out the mint to
private persons, who gain most by it, and share stakes with the money-changers,
whom the call xeraffi, who have their
shops, or offices, in the Maydan, and are obliged to bring all foreign money to
the public mint, which they call Serab-Chane.

There is this remarkable as to the brass money, that every
city hath its particular money and mark, which is changed every year, and that
such money goes only in the place where it was made.So that upon their first day of the
year, which begins on the vernal equinox, all the brass money is cry’d down and
the mark of it is changed.The
ordinary mark of it is a stag, a deer, a goat, a satyr, a fish, a serpent, or
some such thing.At the time of our
travels, the kasbeki were marked at
Isfahan with a lion, at Scamachie with a devil, at Kaschan with a cock, and in
Gilan with a fish.The king of
Persia, on the one side, makes a great advantage by this brass money, inasmuch
as he pays for a pound of this metal, but an Abbas, which amounts to about
eighteen pence, and he hath made of it sixty four kasbeki; and on the other he,
by this means, keeps the kingdom from being too full of uncurrent and cry’d down
money.

True indeed it is that the females go twelve months, but
those are extremely misinformed who believe that the male, when he covers her,
turns his hinder part to her.This
mistake took its rise hence, that the camels, when they make water [i.e,
urinate], put their yards backwards between their hinder legs, but in the work
of generation they use them otherwise.The female lies down upon her belly and the male covers her after same
manner as horses do.And though
this creature be of a great bulk, yet is not its generative member, which is as
at least three foot in length and thicker than a man’s little finger.This animal is seldom eaten, as being
more serviceable in point of work; but when they fall under their burdens, or in
case they be stung by one of the moheres, they kill them with two thrusts into
the throat: one at the place where it joins to the head, the other towards the
breast, and then they them.

There are [an] abundance of horses in Persia, most of them
well made.They are very handsome
about the head, neck, ears, crupper, and legs.Media bred heretofore such excellent
horses that they were all kept for the king.The horses of those parts are at this
time very good ones, and there are of an excellent breed in the province of
Erscheck, near Ardebil; but it is with-all certain that the Arabian horses are
incomparably better, and accordingly more esteemed by the king, who makes them
the chiefest ornament of his stables.Next [to] those, they most value those of Turkey, though the king hath
good breeding places in several provinces of his kingdom, especially in
Erscheck, Shirvan, Karabug, and Mokan, where is the best meadow-grounds in
Persia.They make use of them for
the most part for men’s riding, very seldom for the carriage of commodities, and
never almost in the cart, which, all over Persia, hath but two wheels.And whereas the main forces of the
kingdom consist in their cavalry, it thence comes that they are great lovers of
horses and very tender in the keeping of them.Yet with all this care, do they not make
use of straw for litter, but of horse-dung, which they dry in the sun and make
beds of it a foot deep for the horses, which could not lie more at their ease
upon quilts.This litter serves
them a long time, and when it is moistened with stale they put it into the sun,
dry it again, and so continue to make use of it.With their soft beds they also cover
them with a hair-cloth, lines with a king of soft coarse cloth.They also fasten them by the hinder
feet, to a stake, that, in case they should break of slip their halters, they
may not get away, or hurt the other horses.All the manage they bestow on them
consists only in accustoming them to start away, as lightning, at the beginning
of a race, and they call those horses which exceed in swiftness, bad-pay, that is, windy-heeled.If their horses be white or gray, they
color the main and the tail, and sometimes also the legs, with red or orange;
wherein the Polanders and Tartars are wont to imitate them.They do not in any thing make so great
ostentation of their expense, as in what is employed about the harness of their
horses, which they sometimes cover with plates of gold or silver and adorn the
reigns, saddles and covering clothes with goldsmiths work and embroidery.Yet is not this custom of so late a
beginning, but that there may somewhat of this kind be observed out of the most
ancient authors of the Greek history.

They have also a great number of mules, which for the most
part are used only for riding.The
king himself and the khans ordinarily ride upon these, and they stood us in good
steed when all other kind of riding had been very troublesome to us in our
sickness.They yield as good rate
as horses, so that a mule (though none of the best nor very handsome) is sold at
least for a hundred crowns.I was
told there were some white ones, but they are very rare and highly valued; and I
must confess, I never saw any.

Asses are very common all over the East, but in Persia more
than anywhere, and especially at Isfahan, where there is an infinite number of
them, in regard they allow not carting within the city.Those who drive them have at the end of
their whip a great bodkin fastened with a chain, wherewith they make a noise and
are perpetually pricking of this creature, which seems to be more cold and heavy
in this country than anywhere else.

This custom of keeping their heads always very hot brings
them to that tenderness that they dare not expose them to the cold, [nor] in
calm weather.To this purpose I
conceive I may allege what Herodotus[18]
says, to wit, that after a fight between the Persians and the Egyptians where
there fell a great number of men on both sides, care was taken that the bodies
of both parties were disposed into several places, and it was found sometime
after that the skulls of the Persians were so thin and delicate that a man might
thrusts his finger into them, and that on the contrary those of the Egyptians
were so hard that they could not be broken with stones.The reason he gives for it, is that he
says the Egyptians who were accustomed from their infancy to go bare headed in
the sun were by that means grown hard whereas the Persians having their heads
always wrapped about were very tender in their skulls.And indeed they never uncovered them,
neither at their devotions nor when they salute other men, no not when they
speak to their king: but when they salute any, they do it by a low inclination
of the head and putting of their hand to their breast.

Many of the Persians where red caps, whence the Turks take
occasion to call them by way of derision Kisilbaschs [=Qizilbash], that is to
say, red-heads.Most authors who
treat of the affairs of Persia write this word Cuselbas, Queselbach, or
Querselbach; but the right name is Kisilbasch, as being compounded of the word
kisil, which hath two different
significations, to wit, that of red, and of gold, and basch, which signifies a head.Pualus Jovius[19]
in the thirteenth book of his Histories, and after him F. Bizarro in
the tenth book of his History of
Persia, affirm that Tesellis, disciple of Harduellis (otherwise named Eider)
who as they say lived about the beginning of the sixteenth age, was the first
who brought the Persians to wear red caps, to distinguish them from the Turks,
at their separation from them in the business of religion.But they are both mistaken: for the
truth is that the Persians, when they broke communion with the Turks and made a
particular sect of the Muhammad religion, by the advice of Schich-Safi, the
author of their new opinions, immediately held that the first successors of
Muhammad—Omar, Osman, and Abubekr—had usurped the succession to the prejudice of
Ali’s right, and would have this last be accounted the prophet, and that his
twelve successors (whom we shall name hereafter when we come to speak of the
religion of the Persians) were canonized and put into the number of their Imams,
or saints; that they were looked upon as having that quality, and that their
ecclesiastics or religious men wore red caps made with twelve folds, in form
much like the bottles used in Lanquedoc and Provence, which have great and flat
bellies and very long and narrow necks.

This difference in matter of religion occasioned a great war
between the two nations wherein the Turks making advantage of their arms were
very cruel towards the Persians, but especially the ecclesiastics by reason of
the aversion which they had for that new religion.And in regard their coiffure, or what
they wore about their heads, distinguished them from the others, they left off
their caps in several places of the kingdom and obliged the rest to follow their
example.

this persecution lasted till Shah Ismael I, finding himself
forced by the Turks to retreat into the province of Gilan and having some reason
to fear that within a short time he might see the whole kingdom in the hands of
the professed enemies of his religion, resolved to meet them and to put all to
the hazard of a battle.To this end
he sent persons to represent to the provinces and the chief cities of the
kingdom, the danger whereto the state, their liberties, and religion were
exposed if they resolved not to make what opposition the could in that extremity
against the Turk, sending them word that he would grant those who should serve
him in person, in that conjuncture of affairs, a general and perpetual
exemption, for them and their posterity.By this means he got together an army of three-hundred thousand fighting
men, wherewith he marched directly to Ardebil, as desirous to begin his exploits
by a pious enterprise, in recovering the sepulchre of Schich-Safi out of the
hands of the Turks, who were forced out of that city.He was no sooner become master of it,
but he confirmed all he had promised touching the exemption, and to the end
those might be known who were to enjoy the benefit of it, he ordered the making
of these red caps, which were done with twelve folds in remembrance of their
twelve Imams.But in regard the
city was not able to find scarlet enough for so great a number of caps, a
shoe-maker of Ardebil would needs make twelve of them of maroquin, or goat’s leather, of the same
color, which Shah Ismael presented to the chief commanders of his army.He ordered them to be red, to make a
certain representation of the crown of Ali, whom the Persians give the quality
of king, as well as of prophet, as they do these caps the name of tatsch, that is to say, a crown.Whence it comes that the Persians are so
far from taking it ill that they are called Kisilbaschs, that they think it an
honor done them, though in effect only those of the posterity of Ali and these
exempted persons wear red caps: the former having them covered with linen cloth,
or some other king of stuff, and the other without anything at all about
them.The posterity of these
exempted persons do still enjoy the privileges, and out of them is chosen the
guard for the king’s person, as being looked upon as the Swizzers [=Swiss
mercenaries?] are in the courts of diverse princes of Europe.

Their ordinary habit are a kind of sleeveless coats of cotton
or silk of several colors, which come down to the calves of their legs.Those of cotton have flowers printed
upon the cloth and are quilted as mattresses.They draw the sides of them together
under the left arm and gird themselves with a scarf about two ells in length
called tzarkefi, which comes several
times about the body.The richer
sort have upon this another rich scarf which they call schal, made of a very fine stuff brought
by the Indians into Persia: for their silk being much fairer and their colors
more lively and finer than those of Persia, their stuffs are accordingly more
highly esteemed.

When the mollas, or priests, come before the medere, they
take off that rich scarf to express their humility.The other Persians wear in it a poniard,
their knives, their handkerchiefs, and their money; and those whose profession
it is to write for others carry in them their ink-horns, a pen- knife, and a
little whetstone, letters, and all that the Muscovites are wont to thrust into
their boots or buskins which serve them instead of pockets.Persons of quality and the king himself
wear over this coat a kind of rochet without sleeves, which reaches but to the
waste, bordered with sables.When
they go abroad (whether afoot or on horse-back) they cast over these a silk
garment of diverse colors, or wrought with gold flowers, which they call jakub cahni, from a king of that name
who was the first that ever wore them in Persia.Their breeches are of cotton, made after
the fashion of drawers; accordingly they wear them under their shirts and they
reach down to their feet.Their
shirts are of cotton cloth, and for the most part streaked with red.Their stockings are of woolen cloth,
unhandsomely cut out, without any shape or any proportion to the leg.They wear them very wide and commonly
they are made of green cloth; a color which is abhorred by the Turks.This is indeed one of the chiefest
differences of their religion, upon this accompt: that Muhammad having worn a
green cap, the Persians—the more to dishonor that color—put their feet into that
which their great Prophet wore about his head.Their shoes, which they call kefs, are very picked at the toe and
very low quartered, so as that they put them off and on with as much ease as we
do our slippers.Which convenience
they the more stand in need of, in regard they put them off in the antechamber,
at their own houses as well as when they visit their friends, either upon
business or otherwise.To this
purpose I remember that one day going to the khan of Scamachie, about the time
he gives audience for the administration of justice, we found in the antechamber
more shoes than the richest shoe-maker thereabouts had in his shop, and standing
by them, one I may call the shoe-keeper, who with a forked stick gave those
their shoes who went out.

The women wear much finer stuffs than the men do and have not
anything to tie about the waist but their drawers and shirts of men.Their stockings are ordinarily of red or
green velvet and they have little or no ornament about their head but suffer
their hair to hang down negligently in several tresses, down the back and about
the shoulders.All the ornament
they have about their heads consists in two or three rows of pearls which they
do not wear about their necks (as women do elsewhere) but about the head, being
set over the fore-head and falling down along the cheeks to be fastened under
the chin so as that their faces seemed to be set in pearls.Which may give a little light to that
expression in the Canticles, “Thy
cheeks are comely with rows of jewels.”Young maids sometimes wear rings with precious stones in them, in their
right nostril as the Tartarian women do.They also wear of them on their fingers and about their arms, and they
have bracelets of silver plates.But the Muhammadan law allows not the men to wear gold rings.Whence it came that when our ambassadors
presented Saru Taggi, Chancellor of Persia, with a very fair diamond ring, he
had the stone taken off the collar and put into silver, and so presented it to
the king.The women do not uncover
their faces as they go about the city, but have over them a white veil which
reaches down below their knees, which they open a little to see their way.The Persians make an emblem of it to
signify that many times in a handsome body a wicked soul may be lodged, and that
under a fair appearance of good life a great number of enormous vices may find
shelter; as that veil does often times, under very rich clothes, hide very ugly
women.

The Persians are very neat, as well in their rooms and
furniture of them, as in their habit; wherein they would not have so much as a
spot to be seen: insomuch that those who are of ability to do it, change them as
soon as they are ever so little stained, and others, who are not much before
hand with the world, have them washed once a week.Which is very much contrary to the humor
of the Muscovites, among whom a man seldom see any clothes but what are full of
nastiness and shine with grease.Nay it is certain that the stables and other such houses of the Persians
are kept much neater than the stoves and lodging chambers of the Muscovites.

The Persians are of a ready wit and sound
judgement.They apply themselves to studies and are
very excellent in poesy.Their
inventions are rich and their fancies subtle and strong.They are so far from being any way
vain-glorious that they slight no man, but on the contrary they are complaisant,
and of taking conversation very civil and obliging among themselves, but
especially to strangers.The
submissions wherewith they express themselves in their complements, exceed any
thing they do in that kind in France.A Persian, to invite his friend to come into his house, and proffer him
his service, delivers himself in these terms: “Let me entreat you to make my
house noble by your presence; I sacrifice myself to your commands; I lie
prostrate at your feet; to serve you, I wish the apple of my eye might help to
pave your way,” etc., but for the most part these are indeed but
complements.This puts me in mind
of a Persian who coming to our physician to acquaint him with a pain he had in
his side, told him that if he cold cure him he would give him his head;
whereupon it being represented to him that he should not be so much troubled at
the want of health, who was so prodigal of his life, he made answer that he
meant otherwise, but that it was their manner of speaking.

The Persians have ever the reputation of not being
over-careful to speak the truth, and even to this day those who would speak it
at all times must pass, in their accompt, for people a little troubled with
simplicity.Whence it comes that no
man thinks himself injured when they say to him, drugh mikui, or in the Turkish language,
galan diersen, that is, “thou hast
told an untruth”, and the word galantsi, which signifies a liar, is
accounted a drollish expression, though Herodotus says it was a vice the ancient
Persians hates most of any, and that they made it their main business to bring
up their young men to ride and shoot well and to speak the truth.

They are very faithful in observing the particular
friendships they contract together, and they enter into fraternities among
themselves which last as long as they live, nay they are so exact in the
improving of these that they present them before all obligations of either blood
or birth.In Germany there is no
reckoning paid, but those drunken persons who club to it make some fraternity;
yet is not the friendship contracted thereby ever the greater in regard there
cannot really be any between such as are incapable of it: but in Persia it is
far otherwise.It is their custom
to make every year a great feast whereat all the men between whom there is any
thing of kindred and some other friends, meet together, and if at that assembly
there be any persons who out of a reciprocal and particular affection are
desirous to enter into a more close and constant friendship, they address
themselves to some one of the company whom they take by the border of his
garment, and having told that they make choice of him for their babba, father or godfather, which the
other cannot deny, they go all three together to their caliph, (there being no family but hath
its own,) kiss his hand and crave his benediction.To receive which they lie down upon
their bellies, first the godfather and afterwards the brethren, at the caliph’s
feet, who gives each of them three strokes with a wand upon the back,
pronouncing at the first stroke the word Allah, at the second that of Muhammad,
and at the third that of Ali.That
done, they kiss the wand and with this ceremony the fraternity is
established.And this kind of
alliance is so sacred, according to their opinion of it, that they affirm there
is no other sin but may be pardoned; that sacrilege and idolatry are not
irremissible and that a man may hope for a pardon, if he hath drunk wine, nay in
case he hath abused an abdalla; but
that the privileges of this kind of fraternity cannot be violated, and the
offence not be punished.And if it
happen that two of these brethren fall out, they are to be reconciled at the
next assembly, where the reconciliation is perfected.The Persians are of a good nature and
very sensible of any kindness done them; but where they hate, they are
irreconcilable.They are courageous
and good soldiers, going cheerfully upon any design or engagement though never
so dangerous.

They are also modest and very reserved; whence it comes they
never make water [i.e., urinate] standing, but squat down as women do, and when
they [are] done [they] wash themselves.It is upon this accompt that at weddings and other great assemblies, they
have in some by-places, several earthen pots full of water.If they be near a brook or river, they
will be sure to make water in it, whence the Turks by derision call them cher scalxi, that is, the king’s of
Ali’s asses, in regard asses never go through water but they piss like dogs,
against a wall.Certain it is that
persons of quality in Turkey observe, in this particular, the custom of the
Persians, and both nations take a great care when they either make water or ease
nature otherwise, not to turn their faces or their backs towards the south, in
regard than when they say their prayers they look that way.

Sodomy is no extraordinary sin among them, nor is it punished
as a crime.Saru Taggi (who was
chancellor of Persia at the time of our travels) was not punished for his
sodomy, but for the violence he had done in the commission of it.The king himself was given to this vice,
and so far from punishing it in another, as we were told, in the year 1634 Shah
Safi being at the siege of Eruan, one of the colonels, who was got drunk at the
king’s quarters, would at his return to his own, in the heat of his wine, have
forced a young lad that served him and had often before refused to hearken to
his lewd addresses.The boy, to
prevent the violence which he now saw was unavoidable, laid hold on the poniard
which his master whore at this girdle, and therewith ran him into the
heart.The next day, the king
missing the colonel, asked what was become of him.Somebody told him he had been killed by
one of his domestics and gave him an account how it had been done.The boy was brought before him, who very
ingenuously confessed what had passed between his master and him, and avowed
that the horror he conceived at that sin had made him take that resolution.The king was so incensed that the
commanded him to be cast to the dogs, to be torn to pieces by them.The two first that were brought would
not meddle with him, but afterwards they got two English Mastiffs, which upon
the first setting on tore him to pieces.

The Muhammadan Law allows them to be luxurious, not only by
permitting polygamy, but also those other carnal enjoyments, wherein the
chiefest part of the beatitude consists, even that which the Muslims of that
religion expect after this life; it being their persuasion that in their
celestial paradise they shall not only have the same lawful wives they had in
this world, but that they shall also have as many concubines and servants as
they please, and enjoy all other women as often as they have a mind to it.

They use all imaginable inventions to stir themselves up to
lust, and to this end have they at all meetings, whether at common tippling
houses or elsewhere, men and women dancers who provoke them to brutality by
their obscene postures.They use
also the seed and leaves of hemp to revive languishing nature, though our
naturalists assign it a cold quality, which weakens and corrupts nature.I cannot imagine how this can add any
fuel to their lustful inclinations, unless it be that the ventous humor of it be
also expulsive, or that in these hot countries it hath other qualities than it
hath in Europe.To prepare this
drug, they gather the leaves before they come to seed, dry them in the shade,
beat them to powder, which they mix with honey, and make pills thereof about the
bigness of a pigeons egg.They take
two or three of them at a time to fortify nature.As to the seed, they fry it, put a
little salt thereto and eat it by way of desert.Imanculi, who was sent ambassador from
the king of Persia to the duke of Holstein, took of it at every meal, after he
had married a young woman at Astrakhan, he himself being seventy years of
age.Persons of good repute in
Persia will not eat of it, for they say that he who makes use of this remedy
commits a greater sin than he that had ravished his own mother upon Muhammad’s
sepulchre.They call those who use
it, Bengi kendi bengi.But when all
is done, the Persians think they have sufficiently expiated the sin of
fornication, when immediately after they have had their pleasure of a woman,
they either wash themselves or wash their bodies all over with cold water.

There is hardly any Persian what condition or quality so ever
he be of but takes tobacco.This
they do in any place whatsoever, even in their mosques.There grows abundance of it near Baghdad
and in Kurdesthan, but they have not the art to cure it as it ought to be,
thinking it enough to let it dry as they do other leaves and medicinal
herbs.There are whole shops full
of it at Isfahan being put up in bags where it is reduced in a manner to powder
and is at least as small as senna.They highly esteem that which is brought them out of Europe, and call it
Inglis tambaku, because the English
are they who bring the most of it thither.They are so great lovers of it that when I gave a piece thereof to a
master who taught me the Arabian language at Scamachie, he took it for an
extraordinary kindness.To take it
with any delight they make use of a glass flagon, and earthen pitcher, a cocos, or Indian nut-shell, or a kaback, which is the rind of a certain
sort of citrall, or cucumber, which they full half fill of water or little more
and sometimes put a little perfumed waters into it.Into this water they put a little hollow
reed, having at the end of it a bole wherein they put the tobacco with a little
coal, and with another pipe about an ell long which they have in their mouths,
they draw through the water the smoke of the tobacco, which leaving in the water
all its soot and blackness is incomparably more pleasant in this way than as we
take it.Those who have not all
these convenience are glad to take it our way; but their pipes, which have boles
or heads of earth or stone, are of wood and much longer than ours.

They drink with their tobacco a certain black water which
they call cahwa [coffee] made of a fruit brought out of Egypt and which is in
color like ordinary wheat, and in taste like Turkish wheat, and is of the
bigness of a little bean.They fry
(or rather burn) it in an iron pan without any liquor, beat it to powder, and
boiling with fair water, they make this drink thereof which hath as it were the
taste of a burnt crust and is not pleasant to the palate.It hath a cooling quality and the
Persians think it allays the natural heat.Whence it comes that they often drink of it inasmuch as they would avoid
the charge of having many children, nay they are so far from dissembling the
fear they have thereof that some of them have come to our physician for remedies
of that kind.But he being a merry
disposed person made answer that he would rather help them to get children than
give them ought to prevent the getting of them.I say the Persians are persuaded this
water is able absolutely to smother all natural heat and to take away the power
of engendering; and to this purpose they tell a story …

[I have omitted the story.]

We said before that the Persians are great frequenters of the
taverns or tippling-houses which they call tzai chattai chane, in regard there
they may have thè, or cha, which the Usbeque Tartars bring thither from
Chattai.It is an herb which hath
long an narrow leaves about an inch in length and half an inch in breadth.In order to the keeping and
transportation of it, they dry it so as that it turns to a dark gray color,
inclining to black and so shriveled up that it seems not to be what it really
is; but as soon as it is put into warm water it spreads and reassumes its former
green color.The Persians boil it
till the water hath got a bitterish taste and a blackish color and add thereto
fennel, aniseed, or cloves, and sugar.But the Indians only put it into seething water and have for that purpose
either brass or earthen pots very handsomely made which are put to no other
use.They drink it so hot that they
are not able to hold their dishes (which are of porcelain or silver) in their
hands: whence it comes that they have found out a way of making them of wood or
canes done over with a plate of copper or silver gilt and sometimes of gold, so
as that the heat not being able to penetrate them, they may hold them in their
hands even though the water were boiling.The Persians, Indians, Chinese, and Japanese assign thereto such
extraordinary qualities, that imagining it alone able to keep a man in constant
health, they are sure to treat suchas come to visit them with this drink at all hours.The quality it is, by experience, found
to have, is that it is astringent and that it consumes superfluous humors which
incommode the brain and provoke drowsiness.They who have written of the affairs of
the Indies, as Maffaus, Linschooten, Trigault[23]
and others, tell miracles of it; but this herb is now so well known in most
parts of Europe, where many persons of quality use it with good success, Dr.
Tulp, a physician of Amsterdam, hath very strictly examined in the last chapter
of the fourth book of his Medical
Observations.[24]

It is not our design to dilate much upon the inconveniences
of polygamy, but certain it is that in Persia there is but little friendship
among the women.Some love there
may be between them, but it is no doubt of that kind which comes near
brutality.It is impossible also
that a family, where there are so many women, can be free from jealousy, which
is inevitable among those who would all be loved and absolutely depend on him
who should but cannot love them all equally.The Persians themselves, to express the
inconvenience of polygamy, say in their proverbs that as two asses are more
troublesome to be driven than a whole caravan; so a judge finds not so much
difficulty in deciding the differences of a province, as a man distracted by two
women who cannot live together without some jarring.

We were told several examples of the great mischief happening
in families through polygamy …

[I have omitted two short stories concerning polygamy.]

The Persians are not so scrupulous in their contracts of
marriage, but the many times it happens a man marries his brothers window; yet
could I not learn that incest were so common there as some authors would have it
believed, nor that the son meddles with his mother, or the brother with his
sister.Nay it cannot be found that
before the reign of Cambyses, who fell in love with his own sister, there was
any talk of these incest in Persia, no more then there was in Egypt before
Ptolomey’s time.Their marriages
are celebrated as followeth.

When a young man hath a mind to marry and hath heard of some
person he can fancy, he employs others to make inquiry into the qualities and
dispositions of the young maid, inasmuch as neither he nor any of his relations
are permitted to see her and if upon the accompt he receives of her by them he
finds his affections inclined to her, he makes a demand of her by two of his
friends, who had been his god-fathers at his circumcision, or, for want of
those, by two others of his kindred.This first embassy ordinarily finds no very kind reception, lest they
should imagine the father to be over-forward to be rid of his daughter.But if on the other side, the young
man’s friends find that his addresses are not taken amiss, they continue them
and proceed to articles and agree upon the dower, which in these countries the
friends of the bridegroom, and not those of the bride are to give.The dower is to be either in marriage,
as a recompense to the father and mother for their care in the education of
their daughter; or he promises her by the contract of marriage a certain sum of
money, or such quality of silk or stuffs, to be paid in case of divorce.These contracts are passed in the
presence of the kasi or the molla who signs them.That done, they name on both sides
certain persons to be as it were agents who in the name of the betrothed parties
go to the kasi, or ecclesiastical judge, if it be in the city, or if in a
village to the molla, who is empowered by the kasi to that purpose, and who
being satisfied that all is done with the consents of the kindred on both sides
as also of the parties contracted, marries them by the said agents, in the name
of God, of Muhammad, and of Ali, delivering them a certificate of the
marriage.This ceremony is for the
most part performed in private, the kasi or molla taking along with him the two
agents into a private room or haply into the fields to some place where no
people come, out of fear that some trick might be upon the new married couple or
some witch-craft used upon the bridegroom.Whence it comes that when the marriage is celebrated in public before the
kasi as it often happens (the Persians, it seems, having the superstition to do
action of this consequence according to their observance of certain
constellations, which they think fortunate or unfortunate to them) that the
judge may not be frustrated in the execution of his duty, they oblige all that
are present to stretch out their hands that they may not be able to do anything
of witchcraft under their garments.The Persian [Ambassador Imanculi-khan], whom we brought along with us to
Holstein, told us that when he was married, one of his wives kindred cut a
little piece of blue galoom-lace off his garment, wherewith he made his
enchantments which made him impotent for above two years and a half, till such
time as having heard of a sorcerer that lived at Serab, who had the secret to
dissolve those charms, he went to him about it.This pretended sorcerer or magician who
was lame in both hands and feet, seeing him coming towards him told hum he knew
what was the occasion of his discontent and that he should be eased of it as
soon as he had taken a nail out of a hole of a certain wall which he told him
of; which when he had done he could perform the duty of a married man as well as
any other.

Strabo affirms that heretofore the Persians observed the
vernal equinox as the fittest time for their marriages; but now they are
absolutely indifferent as to the season, and a man may be married on any day
save only in the month of Ramadan which is their lent, and during the ten days
of the Aschur, when the ceremonies performed in remembrance of the interment of
Husayn[27]
employ their devotions; inasmuch as during that time they allow not of any
divertissement at all.

The wedding day being appointed, the young man sends the day
before to his intended wife, pendants, bracelets and other ornaments suitable to
their qualities, as also some dishes of meat to entertain the relations and
friends who are to bring the young woman to him: but neither of them both are
present at the dinner.In the
evening towards night the bride is conducted on horse-back, or upon a mule or
camel, covered with a veil of crimson taffeta which falls down below her knees,
accompanied by her kindred and music, to the bridegroom’s house.As soon as they are come to the house
they carry the bride with her maids into one chamber and the bridegroom with his
friends into another, and supper is brought up.Which ended, she is led to the chamber
where she is to lie, where the bridegroom comes to her and then is it that he
hath the first sight of her.The
bridegroom, who finds his bride broken up to his hands [i.e., not a virgin], may
lawfully cut off her nose and ears and turn her away; but persons of quality for
the most part think it affront enough to the bride who is no maid to send her
and her friends immediately packing away.But if he really finds her a maid, he sends the tokens of it by an
ancient woman to her friends and then they continue their entertainments for
three days together.After the
first engagement, the bridegroom gets up from his wife and goes to his friends,
among whom he spends some hours in merriment.Persons of any learning who come to
these entertainments, instead of drinking, divert themselves with their books,
which to that end they bring along with them and spend the time in discourses of
morality or speculative philosophy which they do also at those other assemblies
which they many times appoint for that purpose.Their poets are never wanting at these
feasts and contribute very much to the divertissements thereof, especially the
next day after the wedding and the day after.Among other things, there is brought in
a great wooden dish full of fruit, in the midst whereof there is a tree having
on every branch fruit and dried conserves, and if anyone of the company can take
ought thence, so as that the bridegroom perceives him not, his slight it
recompensed with a present which the bridegroom is obliged to make him; but if
he be surprised therein, he must make good what he should have taken a hundred
fold.They have also this custom,
that if any one of the company is not there the next day precisely at the hour
appointed for dinner, he is laid upon a ladder set against a wall with his head
downwards and whipped on the soles of his feet with a handkerchief rolled about,
till he redeems himself.The have
also dancing; but the men dance by themselves in one room and the women by
themselves in another room into which the music comes not, but stands at the
door.

The next day after the wedding the bridegroom washed himself,
in the winter time in baths which are very ordinary in those parts, and in the
summer in the river or next brook; but the bride baths herself in the
house.In the evening they set
before everyone of the persons invited, upon a handkerchief of flowered
cotton-cloth, two spoonfuls of chinnè, which is the drug wherewith they
color their nails and hands.That
done, the guests make their presents.If they have taken a little more wine than they can well bear (as it
often happens) they take up their lodging at the house where they supped; in
regard the watch which is kept very strictly there in the night suffer not any
to go in the streets without a lantern.Those who find themselves well enough to go, give the guard somewhat to
drink and are brought home to their houses.

I shall here take occasion to say something of the excellent
order observed in all cities of Persia, for the guard.At Ardebil there are forty men, who
incessantly walk about the streets to prevent mischief and robberies, with such
vigilance and exactness that they are obliged to indemnify those that are
robbed.Whence it came that at
Isfahan we came many times after midnight from the monastery of the Augustines
which was above half a league from our quarters, yet never met with any mischief
by the way: nay if at any time as it might well happen in that great city we
chanced to lose our way, the guard would bring us with torches home to our very
doors.It is reported of Shah
Abbas, that desirous one day to make trial of the vigilance of those people,
suffered himself to be surprised by them and had been carried to prison had he
not been known by one of the company, who discovering him to the rest they all
cast themselves at his feet to beg his pardon.But he expressed himself well satisfied
with their care and told them they had done but their duty; that he was king in
the day time, but that the keeping of the public peace in the night depended on
them.

If it happen that after the marriage the bride be obliged to
live at her husband’s father’s house it is not lawful for her to appear before
him with her face uncovered, much more to speak to him, till such time as the
father-in-law hath hired her to do it, and given her a new garment or a piece of
stuff to make one to oblige her thereto.But after all this she must not uncover her face in his presence, not yet
her mouth when she eats: for she hath a piece of cloth which they call jaschmahn tied to her ears so as that it
hangs over her mouth to hinder her from being seen eating.

The Persians keep their wives more in restraint than the
Italians do and suffer them not to go to church or to any great feast unless
their husbands go along with them.If a woman permit her face to be seen, all the apologies she can make for
herself shall not clear her from the suspicion conceived of her dishonesty, even
though she granted that favor to one of her husband’s nearest relations.This reservedness they also observe in
their houses where they are kept up as close prisoners.When any business obliges them to go
abroad, if it be afoot, they cover themselves with a white veil like a
winding-sheet, which reaches down to half the leg, and if it be on horseback
they are disposed into a kind of chest, or at least muffle up their faces so as
that it is impossible to see them.

The ceremonies we mentioned before are only for ordinary
marriages; but besides thereare
two other kings of matrimony among the Persians which are celebrated quite after
another manner.For those who are
obliged to sojourn at other places besides those where their ordinary
habitations are, yet are unwilling to take up their quarters in public places,
take wives for a certain time, allowing them a certain salary, either for a
month or such term as they agree upon.They call his kind of marriage mittehè and to dissolve it there is no
need of bulls of divorce, but the time of the contract being expired it is
dissolved of itself unless both parties are mutually content to prolong it.The third kind of marrying is when a man
makes use of a slave that he hath bought, and these slaves are for the most part
Christian maids of Georgia whom the Tartars of Dagesthan steal to be afterwards
sold in Persia.The children which
they bear as also those born in the marriage called mittehè share in the fathers
estate as well as the others who have no other advantage of them therein, than
what was granted the mother by her contract of marriage: but they are all
accounted lawfully begotten inasmuch as after the example of the ancient
Egyptians they look upon the father as the principle of generation and say the
mother does only foment and feed the child when it is once conceived; and upon
the same accompt it is that they affirm that the trees which bear fruit are the
males and that those which do not are the females.

When the women are in labor and that they find some
difficulty in the delivery, the kindred and neighbors run to the schools and
make a present to the molla to oblige him to give his scholars leave to play, or
at least to pardon some one of them that hath deserved to be severely punished;
imaging that by the liberty they procure for those scholars, the woman in labor
is eased and will be the sooner delivered of her burden.It is also out of the same persuasion
that in such emergencies they let go their birds and many times purposely buy
some that they may give them their liberty upon such an occasion.They do the like for person in the agony
of death, who seem unwilling to die.The Muscovites let go birds when they go to confession, believing that as
they permit the birds to fly away, so will God remove their sins far from
them.

The men take an absolute liberty to see the women when they
please, but they allow not their wives the freedom of seeing so much as one man,
so far are they from permitting them to see any in private, so excessive is
their jealousy.The offenses women
commit contrary to their faith plighted to their husbands are unpardonable, not
indeed can they be guilty of any which they will punish with greater severity,
nay indeed cruelty.We were told an
example of it that had happened in the province of Lenkeran in the time of Shah
Abbas, who coming to understand that one of his menial servants, who was called
Jacupzanbeg, Kurtzi Tirkmen, that is to say, he whose office it was to carry the
king’s bows and arrows, had somewhat a light wife, sent him notice of it, with
this message that if he expected to continue at court and to keep in his
employment, it was expected he should cleans his house.This message and the affliction he
conceived at the baseness of his wife and his reflection that it was known all
about the court, as also that of the hazard he was in to lose his place, put him
into such a fury that going immediately to his house he cut in pieces not only
his wife but also her two sons, four daughters and five chamber-maids, and so
cleansed his house by the blood of twelve persons, most of them innocent, that
he might not be turned out of his employment.The law of the country allows them to
kill the adulterer with the woman, if they be taken in the fact.These accidents are not very
extraordinary among them and the judge recompense with a new garment the person
who does an execution of this nature: which I conceive is instead of the salary
which he is obliged to pay the common executioner.

The Turks, following the Doctrine of Hanif[28],
have in this particular a very brutish custom in regard that in Turkey there may
be a reconciliation made after the divorce, but when a man hath put away his
wife three several times, or at her putting away says only the word vtzkatala, that is to say, I renounce
thee thrice, he cannot take her again unless he permits the molla to name some
person who is to lie with her before hand in her husband’s presence, so as that
he may be assured he hath done his work with her.I should not set down a thing so
extravagant had I not informed myself of the truth thereof from persons of
quality, either Turks born or such as have lived several years at
Constantinople, who have all assured me that of sixty-two sects, whereof the
Turkish religion [=Sunni?] consists, many have this custom, nay what is more
that they give money to those who do them that good office.There are some indeed who think it
sufficient to put a-bed with their wives a young lad that is not able to perform
the work of matrimony, which they do only for form sake, thereby to reconfirm
the marriage.

[I have omitted a story concerning divorce.]

They relate another pleasant story to the same purpose; to
wit, that Suleiman, Emperor of the Turks, being one day angry with his wife, did
in the heat of his passion pronounced the vtzkatala against her.He soon repented him of it (in regard
his wife being one of the handsomest women in the world,) it went to his very
soul to part with her; and it being not in his power to take her again till such
time as she had passed through another man’s hands, he bethought him the only
way were to have her bedded by a Dervish of the sect of those, whom they call
Derish Rastkeli, who were in so great repute for their sanctity and austerity of
life that he had not the least fear he would meddle with her.It is to be observed by the way that he
who thus lies with the wife is before solemnly married to her and when he hath
done his work is divorced from her, otherwise it were adultery.Suleiman then, having concluded the
marriage between his wife and the Dervish, ordered them to go to bed together:
but they gave one another such mutual satisfaction and ere they came out of the
bed were so well agreed that the next day they declared that they had an
affection one for the other and that they would not be separated; so that it
being not in the power of the law to force them to a divorce, Suleiman was
forced to let him enjoy his wife, who went along with her husband into Persia
where he settled himself very well, by the means of his wife who had great
wealth.

Their metzids, or mosques, where they say their prayers,
serve them also for schools.No
city but hath as many metzids as streets, every street being obliged to maintain
a metzid, with the molla belonging to it, who is as it were the principal of the
college, and the caliph who is the regent.The molla sits in the middle of the form or class and the scholars all
about him, all along the walls.As
soon as they begin to know the characters, they put them to read certain
chapters taken out of the Quran and afterwards the whole Quran.Then they put them into the Kulusthan [=Gulistan], or the Rose Garden, of Schich Sadi, and his Bustan, or Orchard, and at last into Hafis, who set
out the Bustan in rhyme[30].There last authors, who were both of
Shiraz, which is the ancient Persepolis, where the language is more pure than in
any other place of Persia, are highly esteemed as well for the excellency of
their style as the pregnancy of their inventions.The children read very loud, and all at
the same time, the same text, moving themselves all with the same agitation from
one side to the other, much after the manner that the wind shakes reeds.They all write upon their knees, where
ever they are, or what age soever they be of, in regard they have not the use of
either stools or tables.They make
their paper of old rags, as we do, which for the most part are of cotton and
silk, and that it may not be hairy or uneven, they make it smooth with a
polishing-stone, or sometimes with an oyster or muscle shell.They make their ink of the rinds of
pomegranates, or of galls and vitriol, and to make it thick and more fit for
writing, their characters requiring a full body, they burn rice or barley, beat
it to powder, and make a hard paste of it, which they dissolve with gum-water
when they go to write.The best
comes from the Indies which though it be not goose quills, as ours in Europe
are, in regard they would be too hard for their paper, which being of silk or
cotton is very tender, but they make them of canes, or reeds, and a little
bigger than our pens.They are of a
dark color without and they are brought for the most part from Shiraz, or from
the Gulf of Arabia, where there grows abundance of them.

I do not give this accompt of their histories that a man
should give any great credit thereto, especially when they speak of their
religion and saints.For in Persia,
as well as elsewhere, they have their pious frauds, and think it a kind of piety
to establish and improve the errors of their religion, by fables and impostures:
since that even in their profane histories, they take that freedom which is only
allowed poets and painters, as may be seen particularly in the history of
Alexander the Great, which they have so disguised that it hath no consonancy to
what is written of him by Q. Curtius, Plutarch, and Arrian.But though it be not true, yet it is
divertive enough at least to excuse, if not deserve, this little digression.

Where the poet makes a pretty allusion between the words teri and cheri whereof one signifies moist, and
the other of or belonging to an ass.The sense of the verses is to this effect: Why does the candle go out? Why does man
boast and is vain-glorious? Because the one wants moist suet, and the other is
troubled with asses fat.They
also delight much in equivocations, and many times very handsomely begin the
subsequent verse with the words that ended the precedent, as in the following
example:

Kalem be dest, debiran behes hasar
derem

Derem be dest nea Jed meker nauk
Kalem.

[A sentence on law has been transposed to the section on that topic
below.]

In physic, or medicine, they follow the maxims of Avicenna[39]
and their physicians are all Galenists[40].Phlebotomy is not very ordinary among
them, but they administer continual medicines made of herbs and roots and many
times apply fomentations and other outward remedies.They have nothing of anatomy and their
practice is so gross that when I was at Scamachie (where our physician was
entreated to visit a man who, having drank too much aquavitae, lay dying) I saw
a Moor-physician who had the sick party in hand order a great piece of ice to be
laid on his stomach, maintaining his procedure by this general maxim: that a
disease is to be cured by what is contrary thereto.When women or children are troubled with
any disease or indisposition, they do not send for a physician but for the
midwife, whence it comes that midwives have some skill in medicine.The books which treat thereof have this
extraordinary, that the remedies they prescribe are as fit for horses as
men.

Our physician, who had joined to Galen’s method certain
maxims of Paracelsus[41]
and used chemical remedies with very good success, grew so famous in Persia that
the king himself proffered him very considerable allowance to engage him to
continue in that court.Nay, he
grew into such repute after he had recovered some persons who had been given
over by others that the people began to look upon him as an extraordinary man,
insomuch that they brought to him some that were lame and blind from the birth
to recover their limbs and sight who never had them.

Yet for all this prejudice they have for the influences of
the stars, they attribute much to chance, and endeavor to discover the secrets
of things by those means, especially such as are not yet come to pass, the
knowledge whereof is not so easy.‘Tis true, they are for the most part women who address themselves to
these people, who have their shops or stalls in the Maydan, near the Dowlet
Chane, and fore-tell things by lot two manner of ways.Some of them whom they call remal, have seven or eight dice strung
together upon two little pieces of wire, and they predict according to the
falling of the dice.The others,
whom the call falkir, do their work
with much more ceremony.For they
have before them upon a table thirty or forty little pieces of board, about an
inch square, very thin and very smooth, which are marked with certain characters
on that side which lies downwards.Upon one of these little pieces of board he who desires to know what is
to befall him is to lay down his money which the falkir immediately puts up and
no doubt this is that which is most certain in the whole mystery.That done, he turns over a book that
lies before him about three finger thick, the leaves whereof are painted with
all sorts of figures, as angels, devils, satins, dragons and other monsters, and
he opened the book several times till he finds one that hath some rapport to the
characters upon the little board.Neither is that done without muttering between his teeth certain
inarticulate and not intelligible words; and this is the most infallible
prediction they have among them.

Most authors give the kings of Persia of the last race the
quality of Sophi, and the kings
themselves, especially those who have any zeal for their religion, are much
pleased with the addition of that quality to their titles, out of the affection
they bear Shih Sofi, or Safi, the first institutor of their sect, as the kings
of France take the quality of most Christian; those in Spain that of most
Catholic, and those of England that of Defenders of the Faith.Whence they say, Ismael-Safi, Eider-Sofi
and of this a man must take notice in the reading of their history, inasmuch as
if he do not, he may confound the names of the kings, and attribute that to one
which is to be understood of another.

The kingdom of Persia is hereditary and may be enjoyed not
only by the children lawfully begotten but also for want of such by natural
children and the sons of concubines who inherit the crown as well as the others,
nay they are preferred before the nearest of the collateral kindred and the
nephews, since the sons of concubines and slaves are not accounted illegitimate
in Persia, as we have said elsewhere.For want of sons the crown falls to the next of kin by the father’s side,
descended from Safi, who are as it were princes of the blood-royal, and are
called Schich Eluend.They enjoy many great privileges and
immunities, but many times they are very poor and have much ado to live.The children of the kings of Persia make
the houses where they are born, free, and they are converted into sanctuaries;
insomuch that if the queen be delivered in any other place besides the
metropolis, the house is compassed with a noble wall to be distinguished from
others.

If we credit Q. Cutrius, the ancient arms of Persia were the
crescent, as the sun was that of the Greeks.Now the Turks take the crescent and the
Persians the sun, which they commonly put upon the back of a lion.But upon the great seal of the kingdom
there are only characters.It is
about the bigness of a half crown piece, having within the ring: “To God alone,
I Shah Safi am a slave with all my heart”, and in the circumference: “Ali, let
the world say what it please of thee, yet I will be thy friend.He who before thy gate does not account
himself dust and ashes, though he were an angel, dust and ashes be upon his
head.”In the letters he sends to
Christian princes he observes this respect: that he does not set the seal on the
same side with the writing but on the other side, at the very bottom.

The ceremonies performed at the coronation of the kings of
Persia are not done at Babylon, as some authors would have it believed, nor yet
at Kufa, as Minadous affirms, but in the city of Isfahan.They are not so great as those done at
the inauguration of kings in Europe.They set upon a table about half an ell high, as many pieces of tapestry
of gold and silver or embroidered as there have been kings of the same family
before him who is then to be crowned; so that at the coronation of Shah Safi,
there were eight, inasmuch as he was the eighth king of Persia of that house,
accompting from Ismael the first.That done, the chiefest of the khans present him with a crown which he
kisses thrice in the name of God, of Muhammad, and of Ali, and having put into
his fore-head, he delivers it to the grand master of the kingdom, whom they call
Lele, who puts it on his head; and they all present make acclamations of “long
live the king; God grant that during his reign one year may be multiplied to a
thousand”; they kiss his feet, make him great presents, and spend the remainder
of the day in feasting and merriment.There is no such thing among them as the taking of any oath of
allegiance, or obliging the king to swear to the conservation of the privileges
or fundamental laws of the kingdom, in regard their subjection is pure slavery;
whereas among Christians, the condition of kings is quite otherwise, for the
obligation is reciprocal, and the kings are not absolute lords, but are, or
ought to be, fathers of their people.

[5]
Allahverdi Khan became governor of Fars in 1595 and commander-in-chief of the
armed forces in 1598.For a short
account of his career as a Safavid official see Savory, pp. 81-82.

[6]
The usage of “feet” here may be a translation error.Similar dimensions given by other
travelers are in yards. For the reports of other travelers see Curzon, George, Persia and the Persian Question, 2 vols. (London, 1892), v.2, p. 26n.

[7]
The divan chane, or chancery, was one
of two branches of the Safavid government and was overseen by the office of the
grand vizier. The other branch was the khassa. McCabe, Ina Baghdiantz, The Shah’s Silk for Europe’s Silver: The Eurasian Trade of the Julfa Armenians in Safavid Iran and India (1530-1750) (Atlanta, 1999), p. 124.

[8]
The khassa was the branch of
government responsible for administration of the royal household, overseen by
the office of the nazir.The harem
was administered as part of the royal household, thus was under the khassa. McCabe, p. 124.

[9]
The Chihil Sutun was not a mosque, but an audience and banquet hall.Savory, p. 167.

[10]
John de Laet (1593-1649) was a Flemish scholar, occupied as the Director of the
Company of the West Indies, and later one of the directors of the Dutch East
India Company.He was most well
known for the many books he authored concerning observations of a wide variety,
of which twenty-three are recorded in the British Museum Catalogue of Printed
Books. Joannes de Laet, trans J.S. Hoyland, The Empire of the Great Mogol (Bombay, 1928), Introduction.

[12]
Olaus Magnus (1490-1557) was the Archbishop of Uppsula and author of A compendious history of Goths,
Swedes, & Vandals and other northern nations, translated into English by
J. Streater, 1658.

[13]
Rodolf Stadler was a European in Isfahan who killed a Persian thief breaking
into his house.He was convicted
and sentenced to death.Davies, John, trans., The Voyages and Travels of the Ambassadors sent by Frederick Duke of Holstein to the Great Duke of Muscovy, and the King of Persia (London, 1662)
p. 280. (Hereafter as "Olearius".)

[14]
An English ell is equal to 45 inches; a Flemish ell to 27.According to Samuel Baron it is not certain that Olearius used the term
consistently.

[15]
This reference is to an earlier event in the book in which Olearius was aided by
the monks when he had a fallout with Ambassador Brugman.After reconciling, Olearius rejoined the
embassy.The story is on p.
289.

[16]
Xenophone (born ca. 430 BC) was a Greek soldier and historian who went to Persia
in the very late fifth-century.He
wrote, among other works, an account of the expedition. "Xenophone", Encyclopedia Britannica (14th Edition, 1937), 24 vols. Hereafter as EB.

[17]
Diodorus Siculus was a Greek historian who lives around the late first-century
BC.He wrote Bibliotheca Historia concerning the
history of the ancient Near East and Alexander the Great. "Diodorus Siculus", EB, vol. 7.

[18]
Herodotus (ca. 485-425 BC), the “Father of History”, was a Greek historian who
wrote on the Persian-Greek wars of the fifth-century BC. "Hedodotus", EB, vol. 11.

[19]
Paulus Jovius (1483-1552) was an Italian historian and biographer.He first studied humanities, and then
medicine and philosophy at Padua. "Jovius, Paulus", EB, vol. 13.

[20]
Quintus Curtius was a first-century (AD) biographer of Alexander the Great and author of De Rubis Gestis
Alexandri Magni. "Curtius Rufus, Quintus", EB, vol. 6.

[21]
The pilgrimage to Mecca (or hajj) is
to the holy site of the Kaba.The
tomb of Muhammad is in Medina and is commonly frequented by those on a
pilgrimage, although it is not part of the pilgrimage itself.The title of hajji is given to Muslims who have gone
on the pilgrimage. J. Corrigan, F. Denny, C. Eire, M. Jaffee, Jews, Christians and Muslims: A Comparative Introduction to Monotheistic Religions (Upper Saddle River, New Jersey, 1998), pp. 263-267.
Hereafter as Jews, Christians and Muslims.

[22]
Pierre Belon (1517-1564) was a
Frenchman who studies medicine at Paris and endeavored on a scientific voyage to
Greece, Asia Minor, Egypt, Arabia and Palastine between 1546-1549. His Les Observations… was first published in
1553, and a second (enlarged) edition appeared two years later. "Belon, Pierre", EB, vol. 3.

[23]
Father Nicola Trigault translated Mathew Ricci’s diary from Italian to Latin in 1615. The diary is an account of the first Jesuit settlement at Macao, China, in 1565.
Matthew Ricci, trans. Louis J. Gallagher, China in the Sixteenth-century (New York, 1953), Introduction.

[25]
Strabo (born circa 63 BC) was a Greek geographer who wrote on much of the Roman world, ancient Middle East, Persia and
India in his Geography. "Strabo", EB, vol. 21.

[26]
Here Olearius is mistaken.Islamic
law permits men to marry only up to four wives at one time on the basis that
each is equally treated. Jews, Christians and Muslims, p. 270.

[27]
Husayn was the grandson of the Prophet Muhammad.Shi’ite Muslims uphold that Husayn was
the rightful heir to the Caliphate after his father Ali had been assassinated in
661.Opposition came from the Sunni
Muslims who believe that leadership should not be strictly reserved for those in
the family of Muhammad.A Sunni
force of the Umayyad Caliphate defeated Husayn in 680; an event which made
Husayn a martyr for the Shi’ite Muslims.
Jews, Christians and Muslims, pp. 204-205; Lapidus, Ira M., A History of Islamic Societies (Cambridge, 1988), p. 59.

[28]
The term Hanif was occasionally used in Islamic literature as the equivalent of
‘Muslim’.Generally, it signifies
one who adheres to the true religion. "Hanif" Encyclopedia of Islam (Leyden, 1927).

[29]
A first-century AD Roman author of which little bibliographic material is
known.

[30]
Sadi (c.1184-1291). One of the most highly renowned Persian poets. The
Bustan was published in 1257; the Gulistan in 1258. "Sadi", EB, vol. 19.

[31]
Yazid (r. 680-3) was the ruling Umayyad Caliph when Husayn was defeated at
Karbala in 680.

[32]
Anveri (d. 1191) was a renowned Persian poet from Khurasan.Aside from his literary achievements, he
was well known for his skill in astronomy, mathematics, logic, music, and
judiciary astrology. "Anveri", EB, vol. 2.

[33]
Jami (1414-1492) was a poet from Khurasan who is generally regarded as the last
great classical Persian poet. "Jami", EB, vol. 12.

[39]
Avicenna (979-1037).An eminent
Muslim scholar from Bukhara who studies medicine, philosophy, astronomy and
mathematics.Among the nearly 100
treatises that he authored, Avicenna’s most famous is that of the Canon of Medicine. "Avicenna", EB, vol. 2.

[40]
Galen (ca. 130-200 AD) was a Greek physician from Asia Minor and is recognized,
next to Hippocrates, as the most prominent physician of the ancient world.He published hundreds of treatises
concerning both medical and non-medical topics. "Galen", EB, vol. 9.

[41]
Theophrastus Bombast von Hohenheim ‘Paracelsus’ (c.1490-1541).A German physician who studies and
lectured at the University of Basel.Allegedly he preceded his lectures with a burning of Avicenna’s and
Galen’s books in order to further his own medical theories. "Paracelsus, ...", EB, vol. 17.

[42]
The Byzantine Emperor Heraclius (ca. 575-642), who carried out a series of
military campaigns against the Pesians in the 620s. "Heraclius", EB, vol. 11.

[43]
Ammianus Marcellinus (born ca. 325 AD).A Roman born in Antioch who wrote a history of the Roman Empire from
Emperor Nerva to Valens (96-378). "Ammianus Macellinus", EB, vol. 1.

[44]
One of these letters is published in English translation. See Eslami, Farhad, ed., Iran and Iranian Studies (Princeton, New Jersey, 1998), p. 181.